The Evening Shadows and the Stars
by Fluffernutter8
Summary: Even when things seem to be going right, coincidence isn't always a friend. Logan/Veronica movie AU. Third in the Marshal!verse series.


Apparently this series is all I can write lately. Sigh. Enjoy, I guess?

* * *

Veronica had never been to Logan's office before, but she walked in as if she had. Her Department of Justice ID card got her through the door even without an appointment, confirming her suspicions that the Louisville marshals' office didn't serve as a permanent Witness Protection facility. In the year since she had begun working for the DOJ, she had been to a real WitSec office in Albuquerque. Aside from the extra layer of protection, there was a certain look to those facilities. The building there had been a noticeable one for the street, but had still been beside a sushi place, dispelling some of the formality. Logan's office, which took up a whole block with its elaborate neoclassical stone facade, was too apparent. Still, she knew that they did deal with some witnesses.

She knew that all too well now.

She walked briskly down the rows of cubicles, her quick step and bare flicking of her head to check for Logan on either side seeming to drive off most suspicion. She was going to take that up with Logan next time he tried to tell her that the Marshals Service was the best of the law enforcement agencies. If she was still speaking to him.

She was halfway through the large room, which looked like any normal office, when a tall African-American man came out of one of the cubicles and almost tripped over her.

"Veronica," Adam Ackerley said, sounding unsurprised as he looked down on her. "Logan said you would probably be in today."

"Next time he pencils me in, maybe he could let me know." She had stayed with Logan enough times to have spoken with Adam since they had first met: when he came to pick Logan up in the early mornings, at a barbeque Logan had hosted for some of his coworkers. She had come to know him as a steady, relaxed presence, a mix between father and brother to Logan. But she had never spoken to him sharply like this.

Adam just sighed. "His office is down the hall. And if you could find it in you, take it easy on him. Guy's a better partner when he's not shuttling between clinical depression and homicidal rage."

"I'll bet he's also a better partner when I haven't killed him." She gave him a tight, snapping smile and hitched her bag over her shoulder, continuing down the hall.

Logan had been in Louisville for six years now, following two in Madison and one in San Diego. Apparently that was enough time in Kentucky to earn an office, however small. Through the open door she could see low metal file cabinets, their boring blackness broken by framed photos and small souvenirs from the teams he had worked with in other cities. They were cheesy for him, but there was a sentimentality to Logan since the destruction of his home, and she knew that he especially liked the reminders of the friends he had made.

Logan had his back to the door as she came in. She could see the curl of his hair at the nape of his neck, softening from its spikes where he had let it grow out. He was wearing what seemed to be the standard marshal uniform: jeans, a dark jacket, and a casual button down, this one white with narrow green stripes. She had watched him put it on this morning, something drawn and gallows-like in his face. She had shrugged it off then, assuming a hard case, thinking foolishly that he was reluctant to go to work with only two days left in her coincidental Kentucky business trip. Now she knew better.

He was half sitting, half leaning on his desk. The badge at his waist jutted out at an angle, almost resting on the desktop. His shoulders tensed, just a little, as he heard her come in. He closed the file he held around his finger and turned toward her. "I know it's government issue so it's probably pointless," he said, gesturing with the folder, "but could you possibly close the door before you start eviscerating me?"

She could see Adam, over her shoulder and down the hall, still looking pained. Unmoved, she shut the door. "How's your day been going, honey?" she asked, unrelenting and violently cheerful. "Mine? Not great actually. Went to my appointment at the prison in Lexington, and wouldn't you know it but my date didn't show up."

"Veronica-"

"You knew." She dropped the act, rage coming into her voice. "When you went out last night, when you came home, you knew that you were transferring Bennett and you don't tell me."

Most of the time Veronica didn't mind the short emergency work trips Logan needed to take while she was there. They took a few hours, and his vest usually stayed at home. Anyway, her trip this time had been unplanned, a seemingly happy coincidence that her need to interview Elise Bennett had taken her near Louisville. She had thought that it would be another few weeks before she would see Logan and, damnably, she had seen it as luck that she got to come sooner.

Bennett was the former CFO for a company which had been laundering money for suspected terrorists out of the country. She was in prison in Lexington on separate charges, charges which hadn't seemed important until Veronica had showed up to speak with her and found that the marshals had been and gone the night before and were apparently now in the prison breaking business. Someone with worse instincts than Veronica could have easily put together the timeline of Logan leaving casually and returning with the casualness feigned and restless, executioner ready. She only wished she had put it together sooner.

"When did you know? When you got the call? In the car?" She had never showed him a picture of Bennett or said her name, but she had described enough of the details of the case that if he got any briefing at all he would have been able to figure it out. It was usually something she loved, sharing her day and her work with Logan, hearing about his in return. Now it felt only like betrayal.

In the pause, Logan finally had a chance to speak. He looked down at the folder in his hand, up at the marshal's seal on the wall. Voice rote and exhausted with protocol, he said, "I can neither confirm nor deny the transfer of an inmate last night."

She felt herself go wide eyed in that minute before she swallowed it down. She had thought that at least he would acknowledge it, at least he would apologize. Her bag swung sharply as she turned to go. "I have to try to salvage what I can. I'm going to pack and try to get on a flight tonight."

He looked up at her, defeated and trying to hide it. "You're changing your ticket?"

"Yeah," she said, turning back toward him from the doorway. "At least when the airline demands a kidney and a blood sacrifice I'm prepared to get screwed over."

* * *

Things had started between them as a coincidence. In high school, the random alignment of death and desperation had led to the balcony at the Camelot. And then last year, another series of fateful dominoes, the way they had met again, the way that they had been given another chance to work things out and stay together. She had seen it as lucky, the way that they had found each other at the right time. But these things- the lawyer happening to be dating a marshal who had disappeared the person whose testimony she needed- were also coincidences.

She was remembering exactly why she distrusted coincidence.

* * *

Logan's house wasn't by any means a mansion, but it had an open floor plan and high ceilings and even on size alone could have probably eaten her DC studio for lunch and had room for dessert. Her favorite spot was at the back overlooking the yard, a glass room where Logan brought her coffee in the mornings when she stayed over and where she could sit with her work and watch the rain.

It was dark when Logan got home, an inky, swaddling kind of blackness that made it impossible to see even the grass outside. She heard his keys on the counter, then the heavier sound of his badge and wallet. She suddenly wondered exactly what his life was like when she wasn't around. Was it beer and TV after work, or cooking and maybe a glass of wine like when she was there?

The answer wasn't forthcoming. He came to the back of the house right away, standing for a moment in the doorway before he stepped toward her.

Another kind of person, the Lianne of Veronica's childhood maybe, would have filled this space with plants, transforming it into a conservatory. All Logan had were a couple of tables and a plush oatmeal colored couch, a more worn and storied piece than any of the other furniture in his house. Veronica's bag, packed as promised, leaned against one stubby leg. Logan sat down beside Veronica.

"My flight is at ten," she said quietly. "I have to leave in an hour."

Logan nodded silently, his throat working. After a minute he said, "I love you." It was far from the first time he had said it, but she closed her eyes against the words. "But any information I may or may not have about prisoner transfers or entrance into witness protection is classified."

"I didn't need you to send me her dental records and a quart of her favorite ice cream, Logan. And I should have made sure that everything was set with the other charges. But you let me walk in there, knowing that she'd already entered the program through the other prosecutor. I don't know how you could have let that happen."

"That's my _job_, Veronica. It's what happened when I took that oath. It's what happened when I took that badge." Even for adult Logan he sounded serious, not a hint of quip in his voice. All she could notice were the shadows of his face.

"Don't you get tired of it though?" She brushed her hair back a little. She leaned away from him. "Elise Bennett is a bad person. Even with cooperation, I was going to make sure that she went away for a long time. And now she's just going to get to," she moved her head a little so her hair shifted. She flicked a hand, vicious and murky. "Go on with her life."

Logan pushed himself into the cushions of the couch. He angled his leg, tucking the foot beneath himself, and for one moment as he glanced down vulnerably in the dark, she saw his jeans replaced by the cargo pants of his teenage years. She saw, overlaid, his younger, softened face before his present one reasserted itself. "I've made over five hundred arrests since I got my badge. Twenty-four were murderers. Seventy-six rapists. Fifty-nine child abusers. A hundred and seven domestic violence warrants. I've guarded nine federal judges and a handful of jury members. I've played Uno with a kid whose dad was a mob enforcer, and I got a little boy taken away from the mom who was smacking him around even though she was just supposed to be a wrong place-wrong time witness to a drug deal." He looked up at her, his fingers rubbing together in his lap. "That's what I think about when it doesn't seem worth it." A little bit of soft, reaching humor entered his expression. "That's what I think about when the lawyers are ruining everything."

She felt something release within herself and couldn't help pointing a jokingly accusatory finger. "Hey, your birthday present was courtesy of my ruining things bonus." She moved closer to him so that his knee was pressed against her thigh. Talking to him like this was one of her favorite things about their relationship now, but she still struggled with trust and vulnerability. She still struggled to admit her failings. "But sometimes I wonder if it's worth it."

"Do you want to quit?" He asked the question straightforwardly, but couldn't help the gentleness of his tone. "Because if you want to start over, I know of a place around here that would be happy to have you while you figured things out."

"Yeah?" Without intending it, her voice went flirtatious.

"Well, the Econo Lodge off of route 64 has always screamed Veronica Mars to me."

"As romantic as motels have been for us, I prefer sheets that don't go neon under blacklight." She smiled a little, turning awkwardly against the thick cushions so her back could rest between his arms. "I'll be okay. I worked hard to get there and I'm good at it. I know that it's not all lose some days. It's just sometimes I miss the way it was a long time ago." It was especially on days like this that a part of her that missed the clarity of knowing it was going to be her and Duncan and Lilly and Logan forever, of knowing that there were heroes and villains. She lifted her shoulders so they moved against Logan's shirt, catching a glimpse of her watch as she did. She pressed her head back into his breastbone for a moment before starting to get up. He caught her hand, threading his fingers easily between hers. He spoke into the side of her neck.

"Do you really have to go back?"

"Yeah. Places to go, skulls to crack." She sat up, stretched and turned, circling her arms around his neck and kissing him briefly. "But I'll be back. Don't move into my side of the bed yet."

He kissed her this time, lazy and insistent. He delicately brushed her hair back as she leaned away. His voice was soft, a careful, hazy whisper. "I wouldn't dream of it."

* * *

Title from Adele's Make You Feel My Love. There's no Econo Lodge off of route 64 in Louisville. There are no flights from Louisville to Washington after 8pm. But those minor factual infractions pale in comparison to the marshals stuff and the lawyer stuff which is so made up as to be ridiculous. Hope that didn't ruin it for you all!


End file.
